http://www.stripes.com/blogs/stripes-central/stripes-central-1.8040/one-year-later-still-no-answers-on-missing-soldier-1.109309

One year later, still no answers on missing soldier

By Leo Shane III
Published: June 30, 2010
 
This video frame grab from the Taliban propaganda video released Dec. 25, 2009 purportedly shows Spc. Bowe Bergdahl.
Associated Press

ISAF officials today marked the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of Spc. Bowe Bergdahl, declared missing after he didn't show up for a unit roll call last summer. By mid-July commanders knew where he was; a Taliban propaganda video showed the young soldier in their captivity.

Bergdahl, a member of the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, is the only known U.S. servicemember currently being held by enemy fighters. Taliban commanders released two more videos featuring the soldier from Idaho in December 2009 and April 2010, demanding the release of prisoners at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in exchange for his freedom.

But since then no news has surfaced about the soldier or his condition.

Army officials and Taliban statements have offered conflicting reports about how he was captured. Fellow soldiers said he simply walked off his base in Paktika province, but Taliban spokesmen claim he was captured after he fell behind while on patrol.

Today ISAF spokesman Rear Adm. Greg Smith said freeing Bergdahl has been a top priority since his disappearance. ?We continue our efforts to determine his whereabouts and ensure his safe return. Our thoughts and prayers are with Bowe and his family.? Ceremonies were also scheduled today in his hometown to honor his service and push for his safe return home.
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http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/captured-us-soldier-bring-home/story?id=10314693&nwltr=blotter_featureMore

Date: Wed, 07 Apr 2010 21:19:28 -0400
Subject: POW Bowe Bergdahl

Militants threaten to execute U.S. soldier

By Sandra Jontz, Stars and Stripes

European edition, Saturday, February 6, 2010

Militants in Afghanistan have threatened to execute the American soldier they’ve held since June if the United States does not release the Pakistani scientist convicted this week of attempted murder, according to Arab news outlets.

The Afghan Taliban threatened to execute Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl if the U.S. does not release Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman convicted Wednesday by a New York federal jury of two counts of attempted murder against U.S. soldiers in

Afghanistan , according to online reports coming out of Peshawar by PakTribune and Karachi News.

Bergdahl, 23, with 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson , Alaska , disappeared June 30. His disappearance set off an intense, weeks long manhunt that canceled or diverted other military missions and resources to search for him in southeast Afghanistan and along the border with Pakistan .

Officials suspect militants might be holding Bergdahl in Pakistan .  Accounts of his capture little more than seven months ago differ. When he first disappeared, military officials said he walked away from his base in Paktika province. In a video released by the Taliban in July, Bergdahl said he was captured after he fell behind while on patrol.

A U.S. military official in Kabul said Friday that the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan was unaware of the militants’ demand, and he referred all questions to the Pentagon.

PakTribune quoted a militant commander, who claims to be involved in the abduction, as saying that Bergdahl admitted to participating in several raids in Afghanistan , and “[s]ince he has confessed to all charges against him, our Islamic court had announced death sentence for him,” the news outlet quoted the Taliban leader.

The Taliban have released two videos, the most recent on Christmas Day depicting Bergdahl, in combat uniform, saying Americans should not be fighting in Afghanistan .

Terror Monitor: Tape of Captured US Soldier Due
Terrorism tracking group: Taliban to release new video of US soldier captured in Afghanistan

By DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press Writer
KABUL December 16, 2009 (AP)

The Taliban have announced they will release a new video of a U.S. soldier captured in Afghanistan , a U.S.-based terrorism monitoring group said Wednesday.

SITE Intelligence Group, a U.S.-based terrorist tracking organization, said the media arm of the Afghan Taliban made the announcement Wednesday on their Web site.

The video is said to be titled, "One of Their People Testified." The Taliban did not name the American.
The only U.S. soldier known to be in captivity is Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl of Hailey , Idaho , who disappeared more than five months ago in Afghanistan .

Bergdahl, 23, was captured June 30 in the eastern province of Paktika province near the Pakistan border. His Taliban captors released a propaganda video of him about two weeks later. In the July 19 video, Bergdahl appeared downcast and frightened. No subsequent videos have been released.

U.S. military officials have searched for Bergdahl, but it is not publicly known whether he is even being held in Afghanistan or neighboring Pakistan .

A spokesman for the Idaho National Guard, Lt. Col. Tim Marsano, confirmed he notified the parents about the video this morning after learning about it through news reports.

"They're standing by waiting to see what happens just like everybody else," Marsano said.
He said nothing has changed in the parents' approach with media, preferring to maintain their privacy rather than talk about their son's capture.

"It's been a difficult time for them and their family," he said.

Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling said he talked to the trooper's mother, Jani Bergdahl, this morning: "I talked to Jani. They're kind of anxiously wanting to get some kind of information at this point."

Pakistan is off-limits to the thousands of U.S. forces based in Afghanistan . When militants captured a reporter for The New York Times in a dangerous region of Afghanistan last year, he was transported to Pakistan and held for months there. The reporter, David Rohde, eventually escaped.

http://www.kmvt.com/news/local/52804857.html

Town Shows Support For Soldier

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 526-09

Pfc. Bergdahl is a member of 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska.

AP sources: Taliban video shows captive US soldier

 
AP – This video frame grab taken from a Taliban propaganda video released Saturday, July 18, 2009 shows an …

By PAMELA HESS and LOLITA BALDOR, Associated Press Writers Pamela Hess And Lolita Baldor, Associated Press Writers – 43 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The American soldier who went missing June 30 from his base in eastern Afghanistan and was later confirmed to have been captured, appeared on a video posted Saturday to a Web site by the Taliban, two U.S. defense officials said.

The soldier is shown in the 28-minute video with his head shaved and the start of a beard. He is sitting and dressed in a nondescript, gray outfit. Early in the video one of his captors holds the soldier's dog tag up to the camera. His name and ID number are clearly visible. He is shown eating at one point and sitting on a bed.

The soldier, whose identity has not yet been released by the Pentagon pending notification of members of Congress and the soldier's family, says his name, age and hometown on the video, which was released Saturday on a Web site pointed out by the Taliban. Two U.S. defense officials confirmed to The Associated Press that the man in the video is the captured soldier.

The soldier said the date is July 14. He says he was captured when he lagged behind on a patrol.

He is interviewed in English by his captors, and he is asked his views on the war, which he calls extremely hard, his desire to learn more about Islam and the morale of American soldiers, which he said was low.

Asked how he was doing, the soldier said on the video:

"Well I'm scared, scared I won't be able to go home. It is very unnerving to be a prisoner."

He begins to answer questions in a matter-of-fact and sober voice, occasionally facing the camera, looking down and sometimes looking to the questioner on his left.

He later chokes up when discussing his family and his hope to marry his girlfriend.

"I have my girlfriend, who is hoping to marry," he said. "I have a very, very good family that I love back home in America. And I miss them every day when I'm gone. I miss them and I'm afraid that I might not ever see them again and that I'll never be able to tell them that I love them again and I'll never be able to hug them."

He is also prompted his interrogators to give a message to the American people.

"To my fellow Americans who have loved ones over here, who know what it's like to miss them, you have the power to make our government bring them home," he said. "Please, please bring us home so that we can be back where we belong and not over here, wasting our time and our lives and our precious life that we could be using back in our own country. Please bring us home. It is America and American people who have that power."

The video is not a continuous recording ­ it appears to stop and start during the questioning.

It is unclear from the video whether the July 14 date is authentic. The soldier says that he heard that a Chinook helicopter carrying 37 NATO troops had been shot down over Helmand. A helicopter was shot down in southern Afghanistan on July 14, but it was carrying civilians on a reported humanitarian mission for NATO forces. All six Ukrainian passengers died in the crash, and a child on the ground was killed.

On July 2, the U.S. military said an American soldier had disappeared after walking off his base in eastern Afghanistan with three Afghan counterparts and was believed to have been taken prisoner. A U.S. defense official said the soldier was noticed missing during a routine check of the unit on June 30 and was first listed as "duty status whereabouts unknown."

Details of such incidents are routinely held very tightly by the military as it works to retrieve a missing or captured soldier without giving away any information to captors.

But Afghan Police Gen. Nabi Mullakheil said the soldier went missing in eastern Paktika province near the border with Pakistan from an American base. The region is known to be Taliban-infested.

The most important insurgent group operating in that area is known as Haqqani network and is led by warlord Siraj Haqqani, whom the U.S. has accused of masterminding beheadings and suicide bombings including the July 2008 attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed some 60 people. The Haqqani group also was linked to an assassination attempt on Afghan president Hamid Karzai early last year.

On Saturday, a U.S. military official in Kabul, Col. Greg Julian, said the U.S. was "still doing everything we can to return him safely."

Julian said U.S. troops had distributed two flyers in the area where the soldier disappeared. One of them asked for information on the missing soldier and offered a $25,000 reward for his return. The other said "please return our soldier safely" or "we will hunt you," according to Julian.

___

Associated Press writers Robert H. Reid in Kabul and Christine Simmons in Washington contributed to this report.

Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 2, 2009; 7:22 AM

CAMP LEATHERNECK , Afghanistan, July 2 -- A U.S. soldier missing from his base in eastern Afghanistan since Tuesday is believed to have been captured by Taliban militants, the military said Thursday.

In a statement issued from U.S. military headquarters in Kabul , officials said "we are exhausting all available resources to ascertain his whereabouts and provide for his safe return."

Military officials in Afghanistan , speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation, said the soldier appears to have walked off his base into an unsecured area. It was not clear why he had apparently done so.

Agence-France Press reported that a commander of the Taliban's hard-line Haqqani faction claimed Thursday that his militia had captured the soldier, along with his three Afghan guards, in the Yousuf Khail district of Paktika province. That report could not be independently confirmed.

The soldier was not part of the large-scale assault launched on Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan early Thursday. That operation, which involves about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, was encountering only light resistance, officials said. But the military expects the Taliban to respond more harshly once troops move into towns and began patrols.

The military said it would not provide additional information about the missing soldier, because it feared that doing do could place him in further jeopardy.

Wilgoren reported from Washington  

============================================================================

Report: Missing U.S. soldier sold to clan

  KABUL , Afghanistan , July 2 (UPI) -- A missing U.S. soldier thought to have been captured in southeastern Afghanistan has been sold to a militant clan, a U.S. military official said Thursday.

The unidentified senior military official told CNN the soldier, whose name was not released, was captured along with three Afghan soldiers and then sold to a militant group led by warlord Siraj Haqqani.

The official added Haqqani clan officials are discussing ways to legitimize taking custody of the U.S. soldier.

The soldier went missing Tuesday after reportedly leaving his small outpost alone and apparently unarmed.

Taliban commander Mulvi Sangeen said later the soldier was captured along with three Afghan troops by Taliban forces.

Sangeen claimed the soldier was apprehended while drunk following a visit to a military post in the Yousaf Khel district. CNN said an anonymous U.S. military source has denied the soldier was intoxicated while Sangeen's account of events has gone unverified.